collaboration

Nathan Bissette, an English/American musician and composer, and Kristin Borgehed, Swedish dito, as well as co-founder of FPA, launched their album PurcellPartialsPietist in November 2016.

Performing at the Grassmarket in Edinburgh, Scotland.

The duo was founded a few years ago, in Aberdeen, Scotland. The work is based in traditional singing and playing from central parts of Sweden/northeast Scotland, and consists mainly of improvisation and microtonality. String instruments and voices are the main instruments we work with.

This work has a practical side, as is shown on this CD, as well as a theoretical, through Kristin’s PhD studies on microtonality in singing. The repertoire includes a variety of tings, from dance music to church music, from lullabies to wordless humming.

Nathan playing the theorbo.

Participating in the international research conference “Beyond the semitone”.

The album has been very well received, and we look forward to travel around with this music in 2017. Kristin and Nathan would like to say thanks to the board of FPA for this kind contribution!

Here are links to the album, and also to our facebookpage, where all news about concerts etc appear!

Fully aware of that this is a long and important discussion, we just simply want to highlight that a big local newspaper were unsatisfied with the little amount of women on stage on this year’s Hasslöfestivalen. Among their tips for coming years are among others Bessman, a quartet in which both Astrid and Kristin, Lisa Stormlod, and Marie Länne Persson (with excellent blog Slakamusiken https://slakamusiken.wordpress.com) sing. We want to celebrate this as a sigh of society’s increasing awareness of the aesthetic and entertaining potential of traditional music.

Hej friends! Within Ethnography, we often tend to talk about field work, not really sure of if people know what it may look like. To overcome this we want to share some various pictures from Folk Practice Academy’s field work the past four years – enjoy!!

Astrid leading a session with Swedish, Polish and Estonian musicians in Ronneby during the Baltic Trad/e Conference January 2013“Julstuga”, a traditional Christmas music party at Astrid’s, in Jernavik December 2012Kristin teaching the young talents of Baltic Sea Inter Cult, before a dance concert at Korrö 2012some workdays are analysing our Swedish singers in a remote corridor at a London airport…Teaching ballads at Backafestivalen, July 2013.The fabulous singing weekend in Scotland!!#koraleriet – the project with female voices doing Protestant and Catholic hymnsLivatWiwat – the Polish/Swedish big bandJulstuga Jernavik, December 2014.Basic Folk and Tradition, our latest project with young people, folk music and folk arts.

For a much bigger gallery of folk music and folk art pictures, please take a look at our Facebook webpage.

We are very pleased by the huge number of new readers finding our blog, several hundreds from all over the world!! Among our readers are a mix of musicians, people that sing and play in sessions or like to attend festivals, researchers, folk art nerds and people with local connection to the event we cover. Working with this broad audience has lead to a few changes in the website structure.

Folk Practice Academy, often called FPA, was founded by long term colleagues Astrid Selling and Kristin Borgehed in 2011.

Since Folk Practice Academy is an international organisation, our blog posts will be mostly in English, but at times also Swedish, Estonian, or any other of the languages of our associated partners.

This dynamic approach to language does also go for the section of our website called Articles&Reflections. Please feel free to share your thoughts with us, even if you prefer to not write in English!

The hashtag #libertéegalitétonalité will from now on be used for posts here and other social media, for posts related to Kristin Borghed’s PhD project at the University of Aberdeen. The project is called Tuning the Human Voice: An Empirical Exploration of Tonality in Northern Traditional Singing. Feel free to scroll down this page for a short info film.

This PhD project on singing traditions in northern Europe, is in close cooperation with Folk Practice Academy, in fact, the work is inseparably intertwined.

This is a picture of me, my mother Elisabeth Bjurström Jonzon, Malungsfors, Sweden and my aunt Anna Hedin, Malungsfors, Sweden. They are the two singers that have had the greatest impact on me in terms of songs, singing style, story telling, general life advice, as well as together with other relatives always helping my family when I have been away singing, recording and writing.

For more info of the project, please read here!! http://www.abdn.ac.uk/staffnet/profiles/r01keb12